Calendar Name: seminars
Scheduled for: Thursday, August 26 2010, 11:00 - 12:30
Event text: Prof Ian Small
Director, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy
Biology
University of Western Australia
AUSTRALIA
Details: "Perfectly Prepared RNA: getting transcripts ready for
translation"
ABSTRACT
Ian Small
ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology,
University of Western Australia, Crawley
6009 WA, Australia
Organelle gene expression involves a series of more or
less coupled processes from
transcription through transcript processing to
translation. Many of the events that occur
during these processes require sequence recognition by
RNA processing factors. It has
become abundantly clear over the last decade that in
plants, pentatricopeptide repeat
(PPR) proteins are the most numerous of these factors,
with a bewildering array of 450+
family members in most angiosperms studied to date.
The development of screens for RNA processing defects
has enabled the identification of
the functions of some of these proteins by reverse
genetics; several other PPR genes have
been singled out by forward genetic screens for
phenotypes that involve defects in
organelle function. The RNA targets and molecular
functions for over 40 PPR proteins have
been characterised, allowing the first generalisations
to be drawn concerning their modes
of action.
Although the functions of over 90% of the PPR family are
still to be worked out, it is
becoming clear that certain subclasses of the family
have a strong tendency to be
associated with particular molecular processes such as
transcription, splicing or RNA
editing.
Progress is being made at modelling the structure of PPR
proteins and understanding how
they recognise specific RNA sequences, offering hope
that they could form the basis for a
new way of designing custom-made RNA binding proteins
for biotechnology
